Low Light, Mid-Life Blues

You wouldn’t know it from looking at most of the pics in my camera roll, but I spent a lot of time and money in years past on the photographic arts.

In high school I dusted off Dad’s old Yashica 35MM and learned the fine points of f-stops and shutter speeds. In ’03 I bought my first digital SLR and even did a paid wedding gig. Around the same time I inherited a Nikon FA and rediscovered the joys of film, even going so far as to take a community college course that gave me my first darkroom experience.

In the early aughts we smuggled “compact” digital cameras into as many as shows as we could. Bouncers have long since given up; can’t tell people entering The Fillmore that they’ll have to leave their phone in the car. Ironically, many smartphone cameras take better pictures than even my modestly professional kit from just a little over a decade ago. But we tried like hell to get photos back then. Of us, of the band, of us with the band when we were lucky.

Also ironically, with the increasing ease at taking decent low-light photos, comes my decreasing interest in bothering. Last month we were back at The Rickshaw Stop one night after seeing Beach Slang. This was our second go at Mr. Little Jeans in this venue, over a year since the hilarious Cinderella, Your Parking Spot is Going To Turn into a Ticket at the Stroke of Twelve sprint down Hayes Street. And, once again, we were perched way up high, in the bar area above the balcony, without much of a vantage, much less camera angle.